It’s easy to see why horizontal gene transfer would be common among microbes. They often live in complex communities that are ...

(Erik Karits/Unsplash) Cockroaches tend to be thought of as the creatures that keep on living through anything, in part due ...

Scientists have uncovered thousands of bacterial DNA fragments hidden inside cockroaches for millions of years. The ...

The recognition of the phenomenon known as horizontal (or lateral) gene transfer (HGT/LGT) revolutionized our understanding of evolutionary mechanisms. Unlike the conventional vertical transmission of ...

Genes aren't just transferred from parents to their offspring. Nature has found other ways to pass on genetic information, ...

Reversing the evolution of traits harmful to humans, such as antimicrobial resistance, is a key ambition of applied evolutionary biology. A major impediment to reverse evolution is the relatively low ...

A new study has shown that virus-like transposons, called Mavericks, are responsible for horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in nematodes. Researchers led by Alejandro Burga at the Austrian Academy of ...

Like most bacteria, Vibrio cholerae lives under constant attack from viruses. To survive, bacteria equip themselves with antiviral immune systems. Previous work showed that V. cholerae carries a large ...